Since the Minions made their debut as, well, minions to supervillain Gru in Despicable Me, they have taken the world by storm. They are everywhere: on phone cases, birthday cakes, t-shirts, backpacks – you name it. This summer, they’re back, this time with their own movie. Directors Kyle Balda and Pierre Coffin talk to us about Minions and life before Gru.

“Basically, we learn that their main purpose is to serve a villain master, and that without being fulfilled they are kind of lost,” Kyle Balda tells us. “They go through a succession of failing their master and getting fired or, in some cases, killing them. Then eventually this
one Minion steps up, Kevin, and he says that he’s going to go out and find the perfect villain to serve, and he recruits Stuart and Bob. The three of them leave and branch out from the tribe, and they go out into the world.

“They end up haphazardly working for Scarlet Overkill (played by Sandra Bullock), who is the greatest villain of her era, and then it’s more about what ensues from that. The basic premise is about the Minions and their need for servitude, and also how they always fail up, as we like to put it. They are constantly screwing up, but somehow in a graceful way that puts them in a better position.”

“They are all their own characters,” says Pierre Coffin. “Kevin is the bossy conscience of the group, Stuart is the teenager who doesn’t want to do this thing, who’s bored, but who likes the attention – he’s a great ukulele player, and then there’s Bob, who is really innocent and naïve and wants to go into that adventure, and doesn’t really know what he’s getting into.”